October 10, 2006

As rumoured a couple of days back on this very blog Internet giant Google has indeed made a purchase of YouTube for the paltry figure of $1.65 billion! You can read the full story over on the BBC News site.

Apparently this is one of many investments Google intends to make within the field of video.

I say, hey Google check out 365 Films if you are interested in an amazing video revolution! We could talk for half that price!

October 09, 2006

Hoodoos (yes like voodoo but with a "h"), are rock spires which extend from the bottom of canyons and basins. They generally consist of a base of soft sedimentary rock, topped by much harder rock.

Hoodoos look a little bit like naturally formed totem poles and can be found mainly within the Colorado Plateau but most famously you can find hundreds of them in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA.

The hoodoos in Bryce were formed by the coming together of two different weathering processes. The primary process, frost wedging is when frost gets between the gaps in the rock formations during the winter due to melting snow and expands by up to 10% causing cracks.

Secondly the small amount of rain that falls in the area is very acidic and it's this acid-based rain that sculpts the hoodoos into their magnificent, smoothed, tall columns.

Sadly hoodoos have a limited lifespan and Bryce's are no exception with hoodoo erosion levels calculated at 2-4 feet every 100 years.

I visited Bryce in 2002 and I felt it was even more spectacular than the Grand Canyon, somewhere which many people visit without adding the relatively nearby Bryce to their itineraries.

October 06, 2006

Dr Stephen Juan has compiled a list of scientific reasons to have sex... like many of us need a scientific reason! The full report can be found over on The Register, or for those of you in a hurry there's a bullet point list below but remember speed ultimimately results in disappointment, ahem.

Sex helps boost the immune system. Levels of Immunoglobin A increase, which is an antibody that helps fight disease.

Sex helps boost longevity.

Sex helps ward off cancer.

Sex results in a more youthful appearance.

Sex helps reduce stress.

Sex helps fight depression.

Sex helps coping with middle age.

Sex is good exercise.

Sex helps in losing weight.

Above all sex is fun!

Cut the list out and keep it next to your bed, you never know when somebody may need a little convincing.

In a spurious rumour mill that began over on the Techcrunch Blog, unfounded aspursions were cast about a possible Google takeover bid for YouTube valued at $1.6 billion. Phew!

On the other side of the mill wheel YouTube is rumoured to be considering rejecting it! They must be mad, who else other than the mighty Google would consider buying a video portal filled with copyright infringing material?

October 03, 2006

How on earth could anybody survive a plane crash? You'd think it would be impossible but a new documentary shown on BBC2 tonight (3/10/2006) suggests otherwise.

Apparently statistics show that in the US alone between 1983 and 2000, there were 568 plane crashes. With the sum total of 53,487 people onboard a staggering 51,207 survived.

How did they do it? It's simple. For years people have been told the same emergency procedures before take off, you know that video you never watch because you're too busy reading up on the in-flight entertainment options. Well next time you're onboard an aircraft pay attention as everything you see in those videos is there to help you preserve your life.

According to the BBC site Professor Ed Galea has studied over 2000 survivor reports before defining some quite simple solutions as to why they survived at all. He says "Surviving an aircraft crash is not a matter of fate. You can help yourself getting out of an aircraft quickly, and so there are things you can do to improve your chances of surviving,".

Even simple things like passengers undoing their seatbelts after the plane has crashed can be a common cause of failure, "People tend to try and press a button on the seatbelt because in this emergency situation, they revert to normal behaviour. And what's normal behaviour for most people? Well, they experience a seatbelt in their car and in their car, it's a push-button system.

"This seat belt is different to what's in your car; it's a latch that you've got to pull."

October 02, 2006

We had a Mac tip the other day so now it's the turn of the humble Windows user. Many of you will know this one but for those who don't you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Want to switch between apps quickly without having to go all the way down to the task bar? Hold down the Alt key and hit Tab. This allows you to cycle effortlessly through your active programs/windows.

September 26, 2006

A friend and colleague of mine, Tim Clague recently raised the issue of what happens to all his online data when he dies? For example he runs a successful blog which only he posts to, if he dies who will put that final post up there for his readers to let them know? The answer is nobody as no other person alive, even his wife knows his passwords.

It's an interesting problem all right for everybody who has ever had an online account, even if it's just something as simple as a Hotmail account. Does a spouse or partner have the rights to contact Hotmail and ask for their passwords?

Many people's lives are now stored virtually from contact lists, to accounts and appointments. The simple fact is people rarely write information down in a little black book anymore.

CNET News featured an article recently which dealt with the case of Willian Talcott, a poet who lived in San Francisco. He had a worldwide fan base but most of his contacts were stored online where his daughter could access them to spread the news of his death.

With the right documentation Google and Microsoft will release user account details but they are just 2 companies in a whole virtual world of passwords and user data.

Things have to change, that's for sure.

Is the answer is to hide a sealed envelope in a secure place with instructions in your will for the relevant loved one to hunt it out?

I really don't know what the answer is but there must be thousands of people experiencing this problem every single day?

September 25, 2006

Viral Marketing is more than this years buzzword, it is currently the biggest and best form of marketing for a product out there. What's more it's 100% free.

You know how easy a virus spreads, right? Well viral marketing is exactly the same.

What is Viral Marketing? Well put simply Viral Marketing is word of mouth. I see something great, I tell you about it, you tell your mate John about it, John tells Sophie and so on. Of course it's not so much about the word on the street anymore, no nowadays we have a much better, faster method of spreading the good word - email.

You can't just go out, write an email about a great product and hope that everybody will spread it for you, because they won't. The trick is to send them something for free which is so great they can't possibly resist the temptation to hit the forward button in their email program and send it to all their contacts.

Remember that email you got last week with that funky game where you drove around your office in a chair race? It was so great you forwarded the mail around your own office and before long everybody was playing it instead of doing work? That's Viral Marketing in action right there baby. What you didn't realise is that when you visit the wesite you're actually visiting a subsection of a manufacturers website, and if you enjoy playing the game there is a high chance you may buy something from the site.

If you want to see some of these viral games in action visit my good friend Michael Hughes' website Galaxy Arcade. He's been making these games for a good few years now and has a number of top clients, plus the games are really cool too.

Blogs are also a form of Viral Marketing. One day your blog seems to be perched on the precipice of obscurity, you write an interesting topic and the next day thousands of people are visiting your blog. Call it luck, call it chance, call it knowledge whatever it may be it just seems to happen.

September 22, 2006

If you haven't heard of YouTube and you spend time online then your head must have been stuck in the digital sand over the last 2 years.

YouTube is the single biggest web video resource. It enables (nay, encouages!), users to upload their own videos to the site where they will stay forever.

YouTube is a public access channel for the whole world. Thousands of videos get uploaded by users every single day ranging from fun short films to somebody just talking into a webcam.

It's all about choice you see. TV really is on the decline because it's just not immediate and accessible enough for it's viewers, whereas video on the web is huge. Tune into YouTube and you can watch just about anything you like, including many things which shouldn't be there for copyright reasons.

Of course 90% of the videos are just people filming themselves using their mobile phones and the overall quality of the content suffers as a result.

YouTube gets over 70 million unique visitors every single day which is incredible. Imagine a TV channel that had that many viewers.

YouTube's master plan is to get much more advertising on their site but unfortunately many advertisers are worried about having their ad associated with copyrighted material and are refusing to get involved even though the targetted advertising potential is immense.

Currently YouTube is looking for buyers and asking a whopping $1.5 billion for the company.

A much better proposition for advertisers can be found over at 365 Films. 365 Films is the concept of 2 English guys - me (Shaune Fradley), being one of them and the other is Tim Clague. We've been making films and televison for over 15 years now and realised a while back that the web video revolution was coming.

365 Films is an advertisers dream. It has the potential to reach as many people as YouTube but with content that is copyright free and filmed every day at the highest quality.

The point of 365 Films is to be the first fully interactive "channel" with content that is requested by it's viewers and filmed by us. For example we can make a film one day and if the viewers like it we can do a sequel the next. Effectively viewers tell us exactly what they want to see and we give it to them every day. The viewers are happy, the programme makes are happy and the advertisers are over the moon due to the targetted campaign results from our films.